“Of course we’re staying!” he assured her. “I wouldn’t miss a minute. It’s a privilege. So grateful to all of you. And Lewyn, of course.”
All of them looked at Lewyn, then. All of them. He felt himself get hot, as if someone had turned a knob at his ankle and the flame climbed upward: knee, hip, breastbone, temple. He stared helplessly at his plate, with its unlovely smear of brisket and carrot, feeling faint and ill and thinking, as had always been his curse, of how much better his brother and sister would be parrying this absurd combination of circumstances. As for the boys—his friends, he supposed—they looked on in bland affability. Jonas even clapped him on the back. And she slipped away again.
At last, the door was opened and shut for Elijah and for Miriam, whose his-and-hers cups were held aloft at each table. The tiny rabbi reminded them that the Seder was an opportunity to recognize and express solidarity with the victims of modern-day oppression and injustice, “just as we once were slaves in the land of Egypt. For while our story looks back to ancient scourges like cattle disease, locusts, and frogs, we also recognize contemporary scourges like racism, sexism, homophobia, and the war on women’s right to choose.”
Lewyn felt—or was it his imagination?—the slightest of chills at his end of the table. There wasn’t a man among these “friends” who recognized, let alone defended, a woman’s right to choose. But it was nearly over, and nothing awful had happened. Surely they were home free.
“Every Passover should call us to social justice,” the rabbi’s reedy voice concluded. “The Seder reminds us that the political is personal, so take it personally and do something about it.”
This, with its ring of finality, was met with good-natured cheering, and Lewyn, relieved that escape was nigh, chanced a quick look around him at the boys, like a camp counselor making sure he hadn’t lost any of his charges on a wilderness hike. But none of them met his eye. They were all looking at Jim, the hockey-playing subject of that failed intervention, who was now, unaccountably, on his feet with one hand in the air, as if about to swear himself in. But to what end?
“Excuse me,” Jim said in a shockingly calm and very steady voice. “Excuse me, everyone. May I say something?”
No one immediately responded. And then the rabbi herself came over, smiling, extending the microphone. It took her a while, on her little legs. “Of course,” she told them all. Lewyn, paralyzed anew, merely gaped upward.
Yo, there’s a lot of Jews at Michigan, too! Lewyn suddenly recalled. Jim had said that, to his mother. His heart was thudding.
“Thank you so much … ah … Rabbi,” said Jim. He was so tall and so lean and so very, very blond.
“I only wanted to say, on behalf of myself and my friends here,” he gestured at their little group, as if anyone looking might have doubted he meant the overdressed specimens at their end of the table, “how very much we appreciate being welcomed like this, even though we are strangers here. Like it says in Matthew twenty-five: I was hungry and you gave me food. I was thirsty and you gave me drink.”
A palpable ripple of unease ran through the room. Lewyn felt it. His face began to burn.
“If it’s all right, I would like to offer a prayer from my own tradition, and from my own heart.”
The eyes of the room, hundreds of needles, pricking every inch of his slouching body. And hers. Jesus fucking Christ.
“Well … certainly,” said the rabbi, sounding unnaturally chipper. “You are most welcome.”
Then the others rose, so smoothly it might all have been planned out beforehand, but somehow Lewyn doubted it was. They were supporting him, that was all. It was Jim’s show. They took his hands. They bowed their heads. They closed their eyes.
“Heavenly Father,” Jim said into the mic, “we thank you for the fellowship we’ve been shown this day, and the good food that has been prepared for us. We thank you for the welcome and the generosity, and for the lessons we’ve learned here. We thank you for allowing us to celebrate the fact that we are all your children. We thank our friend Lewyn, who made it possible for us to experience this Passover Seder.” Lewyn looked up to meet the stricken gaze of the rabbi, her rictus grin. Yes, it was clear, he was none other than the “friend Lewyn” who had made this moment possible, and which of the four sons would that make him?
The wicked one, obviously. Jews-for-Jesus wicked.
“Father, we know that it was part of your heavenly plan to bring us here today, and we humbly wait to understand that plan. We cherish this opportunity to spend time in the circle of your chosen people, the children of Abraham and Sarah, Jacob and Joseph, Moses and Joshua and the great King David, and we praise the special bond you share with the Jewish people. We who have accepted your son Jesus Christ as our personal savior live in the certainty of your eternal kingdom, and know that our purpose is to serve you and your son, Jesus, who suffered on the cross to wash away our sins. In His name we thank you. Amen.”
Amen, said the others at Lewyn’s end of the table.
Amen! said the rabbi. Brightly. Too brightly.
Amen, said Lewyn, but only to himself.
Chapter Sixteen
78 East Seneca
In which Sally Oppenheimer discovers the meaning of the term “brown furniture”
Her name was Harriet Greene. She was the last of five generations of Ithacans named Greene, the family having been right here in central New York since disembarking at Montreal in the 1840s. Harriet’s forebear—four or five or who knew how many greats back—had had something of a foundational role with the Ithaca Paper Company Mill, which enriched the family until the business ran out of road in the mid-’50s. Their family home was in a part of town Sally hadn’t yet set foot in, between downtown and College Town. A few weeks later, on a bitter March afternoon, she walked through the campus and out the other side, to get there.
Sally, of course, had grown up in a house just as large as the one she found at 78 East Seneca Street, more or less as old (mid-nineteenth century), and precisely this style (resolutely Federal, resolutely grand), but Harriet Greene’s house was dilapidated. She could see that it had most recently been yellow, but also that that wasn’t very recent at all. The shutters were black, about half of them still intact, the other half partly detached or with missing slats. A lot of the windows appeared to be blocked. She stepped up onto the porch, and the floorboards dipped beneath her. One of the porch posts did not seem to be fully in contact with its roof.
Harriet had the door open before she rang the bell. “Oh, it doesn’t work,” she grinned. “I was keeping an eye out.”
There was a large front parlor to the left of the central hall, classically symmetrical and jammed with furniture: tables, bureaus, wing chairs, and cupboards, mostly wrapped in plastic. Canvases, some framed, many unframed, leaned against the walls, but there wasn’t a single piece of art actually on the walls (to the extent Sally could see the walls). In the center of the parlor, a patch of floor about the size of an area rug remained uncovered: room to stand and turn around, assuming you could get there.
“It’s a bit crowded,” said Harriet, stating the obvious and moving down the hall.
The kitchen, too, was jammed, not with furniture but with large Rubbermaid tubs, stacked and labeled, reaching up to the plaster ceiling. Sally read her way upward as Harriet rummaged in a cupboard for two elderly mugs: Linens (Table), Linens (Table), Linens (Bedding), Linens (Rickrack), Linens (Barkcloth). She was on the point of asking what rickrack and barkcloth were, when Harriet asked her what she had come to Cornell to study. Not an outlandish question, but it still kind of knocked her back.
“I don’t really know,” she answered. “Most people do. I don’t.”